All Great People Are Humble

I Loved Them All The Way One Loves At Any Age -- If It's Real At All -- Obsessively, Painfully, With Wild Exultation, With Guilt, With Conflict; I Wrote Poems To And About Them, I Put Them Into Novels (disguised Of Course); I Brooded Upon Why They Were As They Were, So Often Maddening Don't You Know? I Wrote Them Ridiculous Letters. I Lived With Their Faces. I Knew Their Every Gesture By Heart. I Stalked Them Like Wild Animals. I Studied Them As If They Were Maps Of The World -- And In A Way I Suppose They Were.

Once More I Realize That Solitude Is My Element, And The Reason Is That Extreme Awareness Of Other People (all Naturally Solitary People Must Feel This) Precludes Awareness Of One's Self, So After A While The Self No Longer Knows That It Exists.

The Trouble Is, Old Age Is Not Interesting Until One Gets There. It's A Foreign Country With An Unknown Language To The Young And Even To The Middle-aged.

We Are Never Done With Thinking About Our Parents, I Suppose, And Come To Know Them Better Long After They Are Dead Than We Ever Did When They Were Alive.

I Want Feelings To Be Expressed, To Be Open, To Be Natural, Not To Be Looked On As Strange. It's Not Weird If You Feel Deeply.